"Now Sophie, it's important that you don't take this personally," Xenia says graciously.
"Our karaoke sessions when we were out with the girls?
I really enjoyed them. And outing your mom to Robert Taylor?
That was so much fun. He's such a fucking moron.
There's nothing in this game that was going to bring his syndicate out of the hole he dug it into. Good God," she says with a chuckle, "that man is a walking septic tank. However, with your mom and you being so close to the family, I knew that cut would be the deepest."
There's a low rumble, like an earthquake, or a huge freight train passing close by. The far wall of the room crumbles, exploding inward and sending a ton of rubble and rock through the room.
Pulling Sophie behind the couch, I rise just enough to yank one of Ren's ceremonial daggers off its wall scone, mentally thanking him for his weapon's display.
The gunfire is thunderous, percussive rounds of bullets spraying everywhere but near us.
Rolling, I kick Xenia's chair with all my strength, sending it skidding across the room and into the line of fire.
The chair and the woman sitting in it explode, shards of wood and bloody silk flying loose.
A sword slams down right where my head had been and I surge up with the dagger. Ren is the one wielding the weapon, both hands fastened confidently around the gleaming sword's grip and as he raises it again, I throw my dagger, sending it into his right eye.
His shock freezes on his face as he bleeds out. Did he really think I would engage him in some misplaced sense of honor?
"Michael!" Ethan roars, "Do ye have Sophie?"
"Aye," I say, checking to make sure the room is cleared before helping her to her feet. Minato is crumpled by the door, nothing but bloody scraps of flesh. I can hear three more explosions, close enough to crack the marble floor and shatter the remaining intact windows.
"That would be Uncle Lachlan and Logan," Ethan shouts. "Time to go."
Huge sections of the house are ablaze and I can hear the dim sound of helicopter blades, more than one chopper, most likely.
Ethan speaks into a headset. "Did ye get all three of the guard towers?" Another thunderous explosion rumbles through the courtyard and a fireball shoots up into the night sky.
"I guess that means yes," I say. Keeping my arm around my wife as we dodge around the debris and out into the garden. The first helicopter is already landing close by as gunfire intensifies on the other side of the castle.
"Ye two are in this one." Duncan materializes next to us; his face covered in black ash and a huge grin. "Get your arses in. Leave now. Talk later."
"Agreed," I nod, lifting Sophie into the helicopter before climbing in myself. Duncan's eyes narrow as he looks behind me.
"That would be Xenia, then."
"What's left of her," I say grimly. The seats are crowded by the time the chopper rises, nose dipping slightly before it gains speed, heading toward the brilliant neon smear of Tokyo.
I can still hear the explosions behind us, and as I look back, there's a section of the hillside that's broken loose, surging over what's left of the Matsumori empire.
On a MacTavish jet, heading home…
"How?" I say, making sure that Sophie's buckled in as the jet takes off. "I was spending every second trying to think of how I was going to draw this fecker out for the ten hours it would take ye to get here."
"Thank Georges," Da nods to him. Georges isn't puffed up with pride. He's miserable, slumped in his seat. "I'm thinking you'll need hours to explain, but first, ye got the blocker off all the MacTavish phones that Xenia placed, trying to stop us all from reaching each other."
"What? Thank me!" Uncle Lachlan says indignantly, "I got the name out of Taylor in less than two hours." He looks at Da. "Ye still owe me that fifty pounds, brother."
"Thank Martha," Logan interrupts. "Taylor tried to capture your ma again," he explains to Sophie. "Did ye know your ma could shoot? She took him down like a bag of bricks and we got the information about Xenia - and may she rot in hell - out of him."
"No, I got it out of him," Uncle Lachlan says again.
"The point is, we had a team of three jets and every MacTavish within a fifty-mile radius deployed within the hour," Da says. "We were already landing when ye were on your way to the meeting."
"I still think Mason's idea was a thing of beauty," Logan says. "Set strategic charges, explode the hilltop, bring it down on the compound. That did a lot of the work."
"Yes, well your over-enthusiastic application of the C4 also triggered that second landslide," Mason said sourly. "You know, sending a million tons of dirt and rock right where the helicopters would have been if we didn't take off in time?"
The explanations and intermittent bickering continue as I put Sophie on my lap, covering her with a blanket. "Are ye all right?"
"I'm still…" she shakes her head. "It's going to take a while before this all sorts into some kind of order in my head. But they all came, didn't they?"
This is the largest executive jet we have in the MacTavish fleet, and it's still filled to bursting with a multitude of MacTavi.
"Aye, love."
"This is probably a weird time to tell you this," she whispers. "But first, I love you. I love you so much. I always have. Since the first time I saw you."
"Butterfly, I love ye right back. More than I thought possible." I kiss her fiercely. "More than I can say."
"Also," she leans in close enough that her lips touch my ear. "We're pregnant."